when creating a colon word the name of the currently-created
word is smudged, so that you can redefine a previous word
of the same name simply by using its name. Sometimes however
one wants to recurse into the current definition instead of
calling the older defintion. The >RECURSE word does it
exactly this.

traditionally the following code had been in use:
: GREAT-WORD [ UNSMUDGE ] DUP . 1- ?DUP IF GREAT-WORD THEN ;
now use
: GREAT-WORD DUP . 1- ?DUP IF RECURSE THEN ;